Wednesday, September 17, 2008

When Politics Becomes More Than Lipstick On A Pig

If you have been listening to the news, whether or not you know much about politics, you know Wall Street has been hit hard this week. In the short term it is bad for the American economy - the financial institutions and individual investors. However, in the long run the markets will recover and Wall Street will bound back (amid with the infusion of taxpayer money)

The positives that I see from a political point of view, is that finally we are not talking about lipstick on a pig anymore. That may seem ridiculous now, but it was only last week that you could not watch TV without hearing about that. I remember thinking to myself, how do we keep doing this every election? Instead of talking about issues that have long term implications on our lives like healthcare, the economy, energy, education etc, we let the campaign spin-masters convince us other things are more important like would we want to have a beer with the candidate? In some cases, actually of late in most cases, wedge issues always come in and throws a smokescreen on what we should actually be discussing. It happened in 2000 and 2004 and each time, the nation immediately regretted its vote.

I do not doubt McCain can win this election, but if he does I hope he does so by tackling the important issues of the day and convincing voters that he not Obama would do a better job managing the country. Sometimes it seems fate (or God, whatever your beliefs) does the things we are afraid or ignorant to do. In the 2006 elections Republicans shot themselves in the foot each time a scandal - (Rev. Ted Haggard - Gay), (Rep. Mark Foley - Inappropriate relations with young boys) (Sen. Larry Craig - Bathroom tapper) - came to light. Democrats won then not because they are necessarily that good at campaigning but because Republicans' hypocrisy was too much to ignore. Even God gets tired of people using his name in vain!

It is still a long time till election day and I am hoping we have buried the pig and lipstick, literally. There is too much at stake in this election to make it about the trivial once again.

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